Those tasked with using Wikidot.com to host spam must feel pretty miserable. Their comments don't last more than a few minutes, thanks to change notifications. The biggest controversy in the community is, do we delete spam threads, do we mock them, or do we edit them to be useless.

Eventually what works best is brutal deletion. Spammers are now trying to fake "real users" by saying things like, "can anyone recommend a whatever" and then replying to their own posting. It makes us laugh a little, before we delete.

Now, there is a problem with spam sites, parasitical link farms that steal Wikidot page rank and divert it to their own clients. We're looking at ways to focus the wrath of the community on these, just as we do for spam. People who steal my pagerank make me really angry… To make it more fun, maybe some kind of a high score table where the top spam site hunters can show off.

Makes me wonder if some kind of load balancing would work, i.e. send email to a random handful of site watchers first, and if the comment is not deleted within 1 hour, to the rest.

Sounds like it might help, though I'd probably elect to be notified straight away as then I can reply immediately if it is legitimate, meaning that it wouldn't help me personally.

An alternative

Something that might help is for the option to receive updates as "Page Spam is a pain has been updated at blog.wikidot.com" — a generic subject for all new page creations, edits, and comments being posted.

Currently, this is the way it works for a page called "spam is a pain"

New email titled "page spam is a pain has been created at blog.wikidot.com"

New email titled "page spam is a pain has been edited at blog.wikidot.com"

Future edits are combined into the previous email (if using Gmail)

New email titled "new comment on page spam is a pain at blog.wikidot.com"

Future comments are combined into the previous email (if using Gmail)

If all of those were within a single email conversation, my Inbox would be so much cleaner! :) All that is needed to make that happen is for them all to have the same subject line.

For people that don't use Gmail, they'll still get just as many emails as usual. Too many.

The biggest controversy in the community is, do we delete spam threads, do we mock them, or do we edit them to be useless.

As far as I am concerned, there is no controversy nor doubt. Spam threads should be deleted. If you edit them and remove the text, but leave the thread, your work is in vain. The thread is useless, has no info, not even nice and pleasant chit-chat among users, and as previous version can be seen, spam text is still there, only a little bit hidden, but not removed at all. and that is precisely what should be done with spam — deletion without mercy.

PS:BTW, I like the new looks of this site… :D I like this gray square and those little arrow buttons on the top…

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney